Tech Savvy: 10 Apps That Sold For Millions…& Billions [Photos]

There’s big money to be made in the world of mobile apps. It was estimated that more than 102 billion apps would be downloaded last year alone. As we reported yesterday, Kim Kardashian stands to make a cool $85 million for her new Kim Kardashian: Hollywoodvideo game, and she’s not the only one ringing in dough from inexpensive, or free, mobile apps. In Kardashians case she didn’t actually create the application — that task went to the team over at Glue Mobile, but she did have input — but her celebrity plays into why the project has been so successful. Marketing is also one of the components of creating a successful app. Mashable reports:

What separates the fortunate from the failed? According App Promo, the amount of time and money spent on marketing products is one key difference between the two groups. Developers whose apps earned at least $50,000 spent an average of 14% of their total work time on publicity and had average marketing budgets of $30,000. More than half the overall group, meanwhile, earmarked nothing for marketing and used less then 5% of their time on that aspect of the business.

Even with celebrity backing, there is no solid way to guarantee if an app will be successful. But there are different categories that tend to pull in consumers, such as the social aspect, as noted by Ashish Tosniwal, CEO of Y Media Labs, an app strategy firm that has worked on over 700 apps featured in the Apple’s iTunes Store. “It’s hard at this point to just create an app and make it very profitable. One way is to take a social angle. If you come up with an idea and then you create an app around it, either you get millions of users or you fail,” Tosniwal told Business Insider. And when you get millions of users, those users convert into some kind of really attractive network, which is really valuable at the end of the day. “For instance, look at Vine or Instagram. They’re not selling anything, but they’re really valuable,” he continued. “They have created a lot of traction and that’s why they’re so valuable even though they’re not selling anything. But it’s really hard to come up with an app to sell something and then make money. Games is the only category where you can successfully create an app and sell something.” For those that hit on something big, the payout can be astronomical, even if the app ends up being a bad investment. Click the gallery for examples. — Photo: Vine.co